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Michael Golden Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from the University of Maryland

Artist Michael Golden has just been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, with a retrospective gallery show currently running in conjunction with the honor.

Artist/writer/creator Michael Golden, co-creator of the X-men’s Rogue character, “Spartan X” and Bucky O’Hare, is known worldwide for his groundbreaking work on “The ‘Nam,” “Micronauts,” “G.I. Joe Yearbook,” and “Dr. Strange, ” among MUCH more, and is counted as one of the best cover designers and storytellers in the sequential art business.

Currently, Golden’s work can be seen with recent covers for “Nightwing”, “Iron Man”, “Wonder Woman,” “Heroes for Hire”, “Exiles,” “Demon’s Regret,” “Spiderman,” “Hulk,” “Mice Templar,” “Serial,” as well as numerous other titles, for about every company out there … including a few secret projects for IDW, DC and Image.

In short, Michael Golden has been one of the most influential creators around for the last several decades:

“….unless you can actually draw yourself, it is very difficult to understand the exact mind-blowing impossibility of what he does,” said writer/artist Larry Hama, of Golden’s work.

“Michael blithely puts down on paper exactly what he sees in his head. It’s like he’s got a cosmic opaque projector that shoots a laser beam from his brain through the kundalini eye in his forehead straight down onto the drawing surface where all he has to do is trace it,” continues Hama. “The result is hard-edged and fully realized in every way. No fuzzy impressions here. No using the side of the pencil. No squiggly space-filling lines blocked in on automatic pilot. To paraphrase Neal Adams (who was referring to Golden), there is not a single millimeter of line on the page that is not directed by conscious thought.”

Recent books covering the colorful life and amazing art of Michael Golden include a Manga version of the “Bucky O’Hare” series, created with Hama, as well as the top selling art retrospective “Excess: The Art of Michael Golden,” written by Renee Witterstaetter, which sold out and has gone into a second printing, as well as his recent sketchbook “Heroes and Villains,” and the just released NEW sketchbook, “MORE Heroes and Villains.”

As a conceptual cover artist, Michael has penciled everything from Batman and Captain America to Vampirella! And the list keeps growing. Mr. Golden has served as an Editor at DC Comics as well as Senior Art Director at Marvel Comics, and has worked on scores of movie production projects, some currently in development.

His art has been the focus of gallery shows in places as diverse as Gijon, Barcelona, New York, Antwerp and Brussels, while his class on storytelling has been conducted from Spain to Brussels to France to Canada to the United States… and most recently China. He is scheduled to also conduct a short version of this class at Wizard World Atlanta, December 4th at 11:00 am.

It’s planned for his extensive 1-2 day storytelling class to launch shortly, as Michael shares more of his philosophy of art and what he considers to be the Golden Rules of storytelling. This course will be conducted as 2 day workshops at key points throughout the United States.

In addition to the Lifetime Achievement Award from the University of Maryland, a month long retrospective of Mr. Golden’s work, featuring over 45 pieces of rare original art, is currently running the UMES Mosely Gallery. Contact UMES for more details.

This marks Mr. Golden’s second Lifetime Achievement Award, joining an award from the Lille Comics Festival in 2009. He is currently part of the studio, Eva Ink Artists Group.